Wednesday’s noon-hour ceremony alongside the Heron Road Bridge, honouring the nine workers killed and scores more injured when the structure collapsed 50 years ago, was only a minute into the first speech when the sirens of an approaching fire truck cut through the air.

Its wails, eventually trailing off as the truck turned north from Heron onto Prince of Wales Drive and sped off to God-knows-what emergency, lent an unnecessary poignancy to an already sombre occasion. About 150 people, many of them survivors of the tragedy, friends and family of the men killed, or of workers killed in other construction accidents, gathered to remember their comrades and witness the unveiling of a plaque marking the bridge’s new name: The Heron Road Workers Memorial Bridge.

“Our city, our community, had never witnessed, and has not witnessed since then, such a large workplace tragedy,” said Sean McKenny, president of the Ottawa & District Labour Council, the organization that spearheaded the bridge’s name change. “Our city stopped that Aug. 10 afternoon back in 1966, when its people became one.”

Among those present Wednesday were three daughters — Marie, Judy and Helen — of Edmund Newton, a carpenter from Corkery, a small farming community between Carp and Mississippi Mills, who died in an ambulance that day en route to the Civic Hospital. The three brought roses to place beside the commemorative plaque.

“He went to work one day and didn’t come home,” says Judy, who was eight. “I remember mom saying, ‘I have bad news,’ and I remember looking at her and thinking, ‘Oh, I’ve never heard bad news before.’”

“I remember it was a nightmare,” recalls Marie, who was 12 at the time. “I thought, ‘This is not happening.’ It makes you think: How would things be different if he had lived?”

Helen was only two in 1966, too young to remember, but she knows this much for certain: “I grew up without a father.”

A passel of officials was also on hand for Wednesday’s ceremony, including Mayor Jim Watson, councillors Riley Brockington, Shad Qadri, Catherine McKenney and Keith Egli, and MPPs Yasir Naqvi and John Fraser. But the occasion really belonged to the workers and their families.

Many of Omer Lamadeleine’s family were there to remember his death that day.

George Davis, Mike Graham and Mike Lecuyer — the latter addressed the audience eloquently about his subsequent involvement in matters of worker safety — who all were on top of the bridge when it fell, were there.

Graham, who has worked at Carleton University as an engineer, has driven under the bridge every day for the past eight years, and says the experience is embedded in him. “It’s a part of me, and I’m happy to talk about it for those who passed away and those who were injured. And I’m glad they’re renaming it for them.”

Lyne Tassé, whose father Paul was a crane operator when the bridge fell, was there with her mother, Margella, who when she heard about the collapse that day, raced to the site with sandwiches and a bottle of rye.

Lyne, too, is glad the bridge will have its new name. “It will let more people know what happened, so that the workers won’t be forgotten.”

Tom Daly, who was transported to the hospital that day with a steel rebar through his right arm, attended Wednesday, and was surprised to find three of his old high school chums from Hillcrest had showed up just to say hi.

“I’ve driven over and under the bridge numerous times,” said the Peterborough resident, “but this was the first time in 50 years I got out of my car and was actually on the site. I thought it would be harder than it was.

“It was a terrible accident,” he added, “and we can’t change that, but if by remembering it we can learn from it and prevent other accidents from happening, that would be great.”

Emil Rehak was there, too. Deaf in his left ear from the accident, he said the nine cracked ribs he suffered as a result of the collapse bothered him for 36 years. Nearby was John Vanderydt, who had worked on the bridge until about a week before the collapse when he quit, citing his concerns for the safety of the project.

“I would have been dead, for sure, if I had stayed,” he said. “We worked in pairs, and the last guy I worked with there was Ed Newton. I was driving into Ottawa from London when I heard about the accident on the radio. It was about four in the afternoon. So I drove right to the site — I couldn’t get on the site, so I came down the slope on the other side, and the first thing I saw, in the river, was Ed Newton’s white hat, with his name painted on it.”

This Week's Flyers

Comments

We encourage all readers to share their views on our articles and blog posts. We are committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion, so we ask you to avoid personal attacks, and please keep your comments relevant and respectful. If you encounter a comment that is abusive, click the "X" in the upper right corner of the comment box to report spam or abuse. We are using Facebook commenting. Visit our FAQ page for more information.